Technical Blog Post
Abstract
Why IIS worker process w3wp.exe is experiencing "Access is denied." in DB2 ?
Body
One example of the access denied issue from w3wp.exe could be experienced with following db2diag.log messages,
2016-06-02-02.35.36.707000-300 E391509H442 LEVEL: Error (OS)
PID : 6404 TID : 6984 PROC : w3wp.exe
INSTANCE: DB2 NODE : 000 DB : MYDB
APPID : <>
EDUID : 6984
FUNCTION: DB2 UDB, oper system services, sqloEstablishNamespace, probe:
87
MESSAGE : ZRC=0x83000005=-2097151995
CALLED : OS, -, CreateDirectory
OSERR : 5 "Access is denied."
The most common reason of similar problem is incorrect setting of the user accessing the database.
DB2 is trying to perform a lower level windows operation using underlying filesystem and experiencing an access denied situation.
Sometimes reinstalling db2 and/or complaining product might resolve the issue as the install steps might guide to use correct settings.
This can happen if the user using w3wp.exe is not part of groups DB2USERS or DB2ADMNS
The db2diag.log does not show what the user name who is running w3wp.exe .
To determine which user runs w3wp.exe open Task Manager and look at the process details.
If the extended security DB2_EXTSECURITY is set (default setting is YES)
the user need to be included in those groups.
One group at a time could be included and tested to perform minimal required changes.
.
Changing group ownership will require an application restart.
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This may only take care of the the db2diag.log entries but the application may still face issues.
Appropriate actions should be taken if the issue is still not fixed after adding to the groups.
UID
ibm11140742